...PS I did try the "exit 0" trick with Xconfigure.sh, but on my system LMCE just kept going back to AVwizard (or failing in some other horrible way, I don't really remember except it did not work).PPS do you know how long it took to realise that LMCE was rewriting my xorg.conf without telling me or asking me? I didn't expect this at all

Allow me to literally quote from the wiki:

Quote

After you do this you may experience difficulties running the AVWizard again, if so remove this line and add it back again after the wizard is finished.

Most, if not all of your perceived problems could have been avoided if you had cared to do your own homework and bought hardware that was known to work well or even had bothered to properly read the instructions and/or workarounds available. However you instead prefer to jump to some pretty nasty conclusions about how this system is not "installable, manageable, workable and supportable", while it is perfectly obvious that you in fact choose not to follow the available advice and guidelines yourself. Or do you really think that everyone here had to compile their own kernel to get things to work?

Another great example is the rootfs on raid you keep on whinging about, no matter how many times I point out to you how to fix that, you keep insisting that there is something wrong with UpdateMedia at every opportunity you get. I run my rootfs on a raid just fine (using LVM even), do you hear me complain about it?

Bottom line: we're not going to change everything around simply because you're to arrogant to listen how things are done. And we sure don't need this sort of "help" from you with your crooked "fighter pilot mentality" analogy bullshit.

If I understand the developers correctly they are really wanting informed and constructive/positive criticism on the build, and from other discussions i've read they also need code based help in implementing the ideas that are posted. This project is a huge undertaking and is staffed with relatively few (as near as i can tell) resources who have the skillset to execute the necessary work required.

If I understand indulis correctly, yes he's critiquing the build and architecture, though doesn't have a great understanding of the architecture to contribute at the level the developers would like. Personally I would love to understand the more in depth working of the software architecture, though I find this difficult with the level and availability of documentation provided in the wiki.

I fully find it possible that I missed this documentation on the architecture at a more technical level, if it is available online would someone be so kind as to provide a link? I would like to make more of a contribution when making a critque (as I believe indulis would as well). If I understood more at a technical level I (as well as others) may be able to provide the technical contributions that the development staff is really looking for.

The issue is right now that this system is so massive, that we are only slowly getting the documentation written.

If you are serious about wanting to learn the architecture, then dig into the code, and more importantly, come talk to us. We are always available on #linuxmce and #linuxmce-devel on freenode. Furthermore, we have provided a chat link to us for this purpose.

Since the documentation isn't there, our options are:

* Write more of it, we are.* Teach more of it, Again, we are. (Watch all my screencasts, and I constantly help inquiring developers)

but again, this is contingent on you digging into the code and ATTEMPTING to understand it. Pick an entry point, (start at the DCERouter logs in /var/log/pluto) and work outward. This system is a message buss, completely exposed and open. You can see precisely what is happening without needing all the documentation up front.

The critiques are quite simply made by people who do not understand the full implications of why these choices were made. Look at the code, study it, ask us questions, and we can form a basis for mutual understanding. Quite literally we have had many critics of this code-base. The ones who have stuck with it and talked to us, every single one of them have redacted their original claims. Think about that.

Thank you Thom, I wanted to ensure I wasn't missing anything on the wiki.

In an effort to not re-invent the wheel, I'd like to document what I learn as I learn it to help others come up to speed as well (perhaps post this in a section on the wiki?). I will start in the pluto logs and visit the chat rooms as I can. If there are any additional suggestions to help in coming up to speed please let me know.

After you do this you may experience difficulties running the AVWizard again, if so remove this line and add it back again after the wizard is finished.

Most, if not all of your perceived problems could have been avoided if you had cared to do your own homework and bought hardware that was known to work well or even had bothered to properly read the instructions and/or workarounds available. ... Or do you really think that everyone here had to compile their own kernel to get things to work?

Bottom line: we're not going to change everything around simply because you're to arrogant to listen how things are done. And we sure don't need this sort of "help" from you with your crooked "fighter pilot mentality" analogy bullshit.

Well, for a start I *did* read up on supported hardware, and it turned out that there are intermittent problems with the chipset on my motherboard and the USB chips on the DVB-T card I used, resulting in having to build a new kernel. If LMCE ends up being 12 months behind in kernel versions then this is the sort of stuff that happens. Notice I have not complained at all about this, I consider it part of the fun of implementing it. And learning about it.

What I have definitely NOT enjoyed is fighting LMCE. I would have preferred to be able to turn off the background "LMCE is silently fixing up (stuffing up) your configuration files for you".

This is a pretty simple request and I think a good idea, it'd help everyone that has hit similar problems. I knowo it is *NOT* simple to implement but I'd at least like to get some agreement that it makes sense to be able to start building a system and fixing up problems without having to understand the whole LMCE architecture, and then trawling for workarounds to problems that are caused by LMCE actively fighting me.

And my point about LVM and RAID is that I spent a lot of energy fighting LMCE to make it work. I don't recall seeing anything from you about how to make a configuration with a separate RAID root filesystem work. I'll look again though. I seem to recall the answer was to have a single FS that includes / and /home in the same filesystem. Which I don't think is good practice, and also reinforces my suggestion that LMCE should be able to cope with many different ways that systems get set up, without disappearing into infinite recursion.

So, if I write a patch for UpdateMedia that fixes the infinite recursion issue will it get included, or will it be dumped because it does not fit in to the LMCE way of doing things (i.e. single big blob filesystem)? There is no point wasting my time on understanding the shell scripts and modifying them if the work will just go down the drain.

Well, for a start I *did* read up on supported hardware, and it turned out that there are intermittent problems with the chipset on my motherboard and the USB chips on the DVB-T card I used, resulting in having to build a new kernel. If LMCE ends up being 12 months behind in kernel versions then this is the sort of stuff that happens. Notice I have not complained at all about this, I consider it part of the fun of implementing it. And learning about it.

What I have definitely NOT enjoyed is fighting LMCE. I would have preferred to be able to turn off the background "LMCE is silently fixing up (stuffing up) your configuration files for you".

This is a pretty simple request and I think a good idea, it'd help everyone that has hit similar problems. I knowo it is *NOT* simple to implement but I'd at least like to get some agreement that it makes sense to be able to start implementing and fixing up problems without having to understand the whole LMCE architecture, and then trawling for workarounds to problems that are caused by the

And my point about LVM and RAID is just that I spent a lot of energy fighting LMCE to make it work. I don't recall seeing anything from you about how to make a configuration with a separate RAID / filesystem work. I'll look again though. I seem to recall the answer was to have a single FS that includes / and /home in the same filesystem. Which I don't think is good practice, and also reinforces my suggestion that LMCE should be able to cope with many different ways that systems get set up, without disappearing into infinite recursion.

So, if I write a patch for UpdateMedia that fixes the infinite recursion issue will it get included, or will it be dumped because it does not fit in to the LMCE way of doing things (i.e. single big blob filesystem)? There is no point wasting my time on understanding the shell scripts and modifying them if the work will just go down the drain.

You choose to fight the system and you choose not to listen when people tell you how to fix things, those are your choices, not our fault if they don't bring you the results you were hoping for.

How is that helpful? Are you saying that the developers don't consider being able to cope with multiple filesystems on a system as a good idea? And yes, I expect that LMCE shoul dbe able to cope with such a configuration, not recurse itself into oblivion.

And did I "choose" to have LMCE rewrite bogus broken xorg.conf files over the top of my working ones?

Again I ask, if I code the workaround will it be dumped because it does not fit into the "LMCE must all be installed into a single filesystem"?

Look, the point of my original post was to point out that to improve LMCE it should be able to be more capable of coping with a variety of systems and configurations. I think that is a good idea. I wrote of my experiences and frustrations, some of which stemmed from what I thought were reasonable ways of setting up a system (i.e. separate root filesystem), others were a result of LMCE doing mods to my valid configuration changes.

If it is a good idea to make LMCE more flexible and robust, then we should take these experiences and see if there are some sensible changes that can be made.

I apologise if the "fighter pilot" analogy was seen as arrogant. But it is not pleasant to hear the "code it or shut it" comments constantly from developers, because that belittles any other contributions that get made.

How is that helpful? Are you saying that the developers don't consider being able to cope with multiple filesystems on a system as a good idea? And yes, I expect that LMCE shoul dbe able to cope with such a configuration, not recurse itself into oblivion.

Again I ask, if I code the workaround will it be dumped because it does not fit into the "LMCE must all be installed into a single filesystem"?

I dunno, but from my perspective, LinuxMCE was "coping" with multiple filesystems just fine until you came along.

So how come my system with separate /, /home, /tmp etc doesn't work? Make up your mind, you are contradicting yourself, either everything must be installed into a single filesystem (as you recommended as a "fix" to my problem), or LMCE works with multiple filesystems. If you are going to attack at least get yourself a consistent story.

Apparently it is better to sling insults at me than reply to my offer to fix the problems.

Thom- if I can get some support for a proposed approach to stop the recursion problem on my system I will look at it and fix it properly.

To date, I have 2 approaches in mind, one is to not create symlinks (or media devices?) that point to a directory closer to root than the directory which has the symlinks in it. The other is to avoid recursions during the Updatemedia scan by checking that the directory that is about to be cd'ed to is not in the chain of directories that the symlink directory is in. This should avoid recursion.

So how come my system with separate /, /home, /tmp etc doesn't work? Make up your mind, you are contradicting yourself, either everything must be installed into a single filesystem (as you recommended as a "fix" to my problem), or LMCE works with multiple filesystems. If you are going to attack at least get yourself a consistent story.

Apparently it is better to sling insults at me than reply to my offer to fix the problems.

PS who's arrogant now, "ace"?

And where exactly did I ever say everything must be installed into a single filesystem? The only one who keeps changing his story here is you.